Saltwater Flyfishing Guides

Capt Bryan Pahmeier of Titusville, FL is the kind of guide I am talking about

I have talked about this before but it bears repeating. There are a lot of guides on our coastlines. Some are really good. Others not so much. Many will tell you they are flyfishing guides. Most will take anybody out regardless of how the person wants to fish. If you go to the coast and want to flyfish with a guide, there are some things you need to think about. First, the guide should be a better caster than you and if necessary should be able to give you casting pointers. There is a preponderance of redfish tournament anglers out there who also guide. If you hook up with one of these guys and want to flyfish the chances of the guy also knowing anything about flyfishing are small. Second, He should have flyfishing specific tactics in mind. That means specific tides and locations that he knows are good for flyfishing. Not taking you to the places where he normally fishes with spinnerbaits or live mullet and tells you to go ahead and start casting. Third, for redfishing, shallow water is better water. If he is using a trolling motor and expects to be able to sight fish for redfish from North Carolina through North Florida, then he is not fishing shallow enough. Plain and simple. Fourth, he should not be a gillnetter or sympathetic to gillnetters. If so he has a conflict of interest. A flyfishing guide is interested in live fish in the water, not dead fish rotting in a net.

A flyfishing guide is a specific entity. Not just a good fishing guide who lets you use fly tackle, but somebody who has put a lot of thought into it. He ties his own flies and probably has patterns he ties that don’t have a name, but just work because he has made a personal observation. I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. When you want to hire a guide for flyfishing in the salt, ask specific questions about flyfishing. There are too many good flyfishing guides out there to get stuck with a bait chunker.